Diego Marani's New Finnish Grammar

Diego Marani is a lover of language and became a bit of a Euro-celebrity for inventing a mock language called Europanto, a tossed salad of every European language without rules or grammar. He's also written six novels, all in Italian, including a book called New Finnish Grammar which won several prizes after its publication in 2000. Now thanks to the dedication of a small UK publisher New Finnish Grammar has been translated into English for the first time. It's the story of a man's search for identity after he's beaten up in Trieste in 1943 and wakes up with no memory, not even his own name. All he has is a jacket with the label Sampo sewn onto it. A military doctor helps him and decides Sampo must be Finnish and so helps him rediscover his language and his fatherland.

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Comments (1)

Marilyn Osborn :

05 Dec 2012 11:35:34am

Thank you for the interview with Diego Marani, a man who is following the paths I began to explore with the study of linguistics. He expressed so well my belief that language is the frame through which we view the world, and so it frames our own face like a mirror when we seek to understand our own identity within that world. Can't wait to read the book, wish I had written it.